Addiction it is: KPMG estimates India's betting market at Rs 300,000 crore. With even school kids ensnared in it, it's a serious problem.

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NEW DELHI: It's an empty basement of a building where a small group meets every week to prop up flagging spirits and melting resolves in the face of an addiction that has cast them asunder. Welcome to Gamblers Anonymous (GA), a secretive group in the best of times, and now with the spiraling IPL spot-fixing scandal, one that's literally gone underground. Many GA members are unwilling to speak and do so only after persistent calls and smses. All deny betting in IPL but the furtive glances they throw at each other tell a different story.

KPMG estimates India's betting market at Rs 300,000 crore. With even school kids ensnared in it, it's a problem that needs to be tackled seriously. This addiction is far worse than alcohol or drugs and as a gambler in 'Psychology Today' wrote, "Everything you do as a gambler, you have to do in secret because no person in their right mind is going to make $100 bills just disappear."

The need to curb this insane and insatiable desire led to the formation of GA here in 2010 and in Mumbai a few years earlier. Both are fledgeling groups presently. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, these addicts purge themselves through testimonials and sharing their tragic stories. Their troubled faces at the GA meeting say a lot.

Satish, a GA member, started as early as seven years. Whenever he won a game of marbles, ludo, carom or cards, he would demand sweets, samosas and drinks from the vanquished. The stakes increased and he started using his mutual funds and family gold to stoke his addiction. "It would leave me physically exhausted as I would get dehydrated playing for 48 straight hours without food or sleep. It was like a fever." GA members nod. They know all about it.

New GA members first have to identify if they have an addiction problem by answering 20 questions. These include: Did you often gamble until your last rupee was gone, have you ever felt remorse after gambling. Their recovery programme includes admitting that their lives have become unmanageable, praying together and making amends to those they have harmed.

There's Akhil, a businessman who a decade back, spent the Rs 1 lakh he earned monthly entirely on gambling. "My young kids would ask me for toys and bicycles and I would shamelessly defer it saying I had no money. I lost close to Rs 50 lakh. With GA's help, I stopped." He says it's far easier to gamble now as there are many bookies operating. Atul, 45, a technician, says he still feels the itch to gamble when he sees the crores being made in IPL.

Though most have stopped gambling now, they meet every week to draw spiritual strength from the fellowship of other gamblers. As Atul says, "Our families will never understand the compulsive nature of this addiction. My GA friends do."